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Future Work

This page lists planned improvements and known gaps that should be addressed in future development iterations.

Mobile application​

  • Complete UI polish. Finish loading states, error handling, edge case layouts, and overall visual consistency.
  • Implement statistics screen. Build out the usage statistics visualization.
  • Verify iOS deep link authentication. Test and fix edge cases on physical iOS devices.
  • Add push notifications. Implement push notification infrastructure (e.g., Expo notifications + backend worker).
  • Conduct user acceptance testing. Structured testing with real lab users (students, technicians, professors).

Technician dashboard​

  • Improve technician dashboard UX. Make it easier to triage pending requests, see project context, and take bulk actions.
  • Add overdue return alerts. Notify technicians (and students) when equipment has been checked out past its expected return date.
  • Bulk approval/rejection. Allow approving or rejecting multiple requests at once.

Statistics and reporting​

  • Add a statistics dashboard showing:
    • Equipment utilization rates.
    • Most requested equipment.
    • Project activity over time.
    • Requisition approval times.
  • Exportable reports for supervisors and administrators.

Automation and integration​

  • Schedule Snipe-IT sync automatically. Instead of manual or on-demand sync, run sync-snipeit on a schedule (e.g., every 5 minutes via cron).
  • Add Snipe-IT webhooks (if available in target version). Replace polling with event-driven updates.
  • Add email notifications. Supplement in-app notifications with email for key events.

Security and hardening​

  • JWT revocation. Implement a token blacklist or short-lived token + refresh token pattern.
  • Rate limiting. Add rate limiting to authentication and sensitive API endpoints.
  • Least-privilege database user. Create a dedicated application database user instead of using the superuser.
  • Automated security scanning. Integrate dependency vulnerability scanning into the development workflow.
  • HSTS. Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security in Nginx.
  • Secrets management. Move from .env files to a proper secrets management system (e.g., HashiCorp Vault).

Testing​

  • Add automated tests. Expand the test suite to cover:
    • API endpoint behavior.
    • Authentication flow.
    • Requisition lifecycle state machine.
    • Snipe-IT sync logic.
  • CI/CD pipeline. Set up automated testing and build validation on pull requests.
  • Integration tests. End-to-end tests that cover the full requisition workflow.

Migration​

  • Import requisition history. Extend the migration tool to import historical requisition records from the legacy wiki.
  • Improve professor detection. Make the migration role mapping more accurate for university email patterns.
  • Handle equipment with blank Código. Provide a workflow for reviewing and manually importing skipped items.

Operations​

  • Monitoring and alerting. Add container health monitoring, uptime checks, and alerts for service failures.
  • Centralized logging. Aggregate Docker logs to a central log management system.
  • Automated backups. Implement and schedule automated database backups with retention policies.
  • Prepare stable production release. Complete all Production Checklist items and document the final deployment as the stable baseline.